Saturday, August 20, 2016

Word Roots & Building Thinking Skills - A Timberdoodle Review

These two fantastic books from Timberdoodle are an excellent addition to your homeschooling bag!  
Building Thinking Skills Level 2 and Word Roots. 



Building Thinking Skills - Level 2 is geared toward grades 4-6 and is a part of Timberdoodle's Fourth Grade Curriculum Kit.  This book has won a TON of awards including Dr. Toy Ten Best Software, Cathy Duffy Top 100 Award, The National Parenting Center Seal of Approval, iParenting Media Award and SOOO many more!  If you are looking for a workbook for higher-order thinking activities then this is your best choice.  It is the number ONE selling thinking skills program in the world! 





 Here are just a few sample pages from the book - they focus on logical thinking, similarities and differences, sequences, analogies, vocabulary development, descriptive writing, map reading, graphic organizers and so much more!  I usually assign one page a day out of our critical thinking book - we worked on the Level One book for grades three and four, and we are beginning the Level Two book for grades five and six.   It has a broad range of ability levels so I would say anywhere from about third grade to seventh grade on either book is a good range.  The pages are very simple and straightforward - if your kids love to do things like crossword puzzles then this book will be a hit!  The answers are all included in the back which is a huge help because sometimes even I can't figure it out.  They really do make you think critically! 

Word Roots is also a book that has been in and out of our homeschool room with my older girls.  I am thrilled to have this one from Timberdoodle's 7th Grade Curriculum Kit to use for Boo.  She will begin this workbook this year in fifth grade and we will probably take several years to work through it, in addition to her regular language arts curriculum and Latin curriculum, we will use this as a supplemental book. 




 Here are a few sample pages.  This book has activities that teach Latin and Greek prefixes, roots and suffixes.  It is known to improve spelling and reading comprehension in addition to adding hundreds of words to your student's vocabulary!  




 In general, I'm not a huge fan of workbooks within our homeschool as I do lean towards more of a Charlotte Mason teaching style.  However, my youngest learner absolutely THRIVES on workbooks and being able to check items off her daily to do list so these two books are perfect supplemental materials for her homeschool days. 

I was sent this product to review as a member of Timberdoodle's blog team.  All opinions are strictly my own. 

Posted by Heather O'Steen Photography at 12:24 PM 0 comments

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Doodle Lit - Review for Timberdoodle

To doodle or not to doodle - that is the question!  ~ Shakespeare

What a very fun doodle Doodle Lit book from Timberdoodle!  Do you know how very powerful the act of doodling can be?  Doodling can help you concentrate, be more productive, can keep you in the present moment, and can help to generate new ideas.

This Doodle Lit book has captured the art of doodling and brought it together with a love of classic literature! Completely brilliant! 

My Banana, who is a high school junior, has a great need for doodling.  She thinks best while creating some kind of art, or even by keeping her hands busy.  This book was just perfect for her. Any of my normal blog readers know that we have a deep love for classical literature around here and this book brings it all together! 





Some of the fun suggestions of things to doodle come from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice - you might doodle Mr. Darcy's dog or design a ball gown. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet suggests doodling a masquerade ball mask or a simple rose (that by which any other name would smell as sweet!)  

We really enjoyed the witty humor interspersed throughout the book using famous quotes from the authors just slightly transposed to embrace the love of doodling! 

"Everything that I understand, I understand only because I doodle." Leo Tolstoy

"For the first time found what I can truly love - doodling."
Charlotte Bronte

"Everything is funny, if you can doodle it."
Lewis Carroll

"Doodling at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth."
Herman Melville

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my doodling." 
Mark Twain

"He doodles the fastest who doodles alone."
Rudyard Kipling


Here Banana doodled what Sherlock Holmes creaky metal gates might have looked like. 

She also doodled a hound from the night time sky in Sherlock..
Out of random circles she decided to doodle a caterpillar! 




Emily-Bronte's Wuthering Heights suggested doodling the trees in the moor during all the four seasons.  There are also historical footnotes about the authors which add interest. There are even some doodles from the authors themselves included in the book! 




From Tolstoy's War and Peace you can doodle some flowers into the vases on the ledge. 

You can doodle "the borogrove" nonsensical creatures from Lewis Carroll's famous Jabberwocky poem from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. My 5th/6th grade Boo will be memorizing Jabberwocky this school year so we will be incorporating lots of fun doodling into her memory time as well! 

You can even draw all of your possessions to fit on the raft from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn,

Doodle Lit can be found on our favorite curriculum providers Timberdoodle website and also is part of the 8th grade curriculum kit from Timberdoodle! 

I was sent this product to review as a member of Timberdoodle's blog team.  All opinions are strictly my own. 

Posted by Heather O'Steen Photography at 11:04 AM 0 comments
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